


Once a year

by soupsalad



Series: Goro is alive but at what cost [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, i missed his borthday so here, old family videos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24674440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupsalad/pseuds/soupsalad
Summary: Goro checks out a very old youtube video on his birthday to relive the old days.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira
Series: Goro is alive but at what cost [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1776391
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Once a year

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I named goros mom Akira to fuck with him in particular. also damn, wriiting this i found out how old youtube is. neat. Also yes i added this to the goros alive series of mine bc like. dont worry about it. that things non chronoligical.

_Happy birthday!_ He had only been given the message from an app he had on his phone with his birthdate needed in an email.

He doesn't really do much for his birthday nowadays, there's nothing that comes to mind other than booting up his laptop and opening youtube.

“Akira1998x.” He says it aloud as he types it into the search bar and waits for it to load. He could have gone about it differently, the person who owned it was long dead but he much preferred the act of typing out her name in the URL. It was the channel he was using to this very day anyways, one of the very first users on the site.

10 videos on the account, the thumbnails all unedited and displaying random points in the videos.

He clicks the profile and looks over the dates of the videos posted, the first one was posted 10 years ago.

“Happy birthday with mom and Goro.” He reads the title out loud and clicks on it, waits for it to load, and settles back on his couch. An HDMI cord is hooked up to his laptop and the large flatscreen before him in his apartment living room. He melts into his seat and watches patiently.

“Goro!~” Her voice brings him to tears like it always does.

“That's meee!~” He waves at the woman behind the camera, smiling, and Goro knows that moments like this, fake or not, were far and few between for him.

“It's your birthday, any wishes for the future, honey?” She slurs her words a bit, but he still understands her.

He looks down at the slice of cake before him and then back up at the camera, quizzical. “More cake.”

The woman behind the camera snorts as if he had said the funniest thing she had ever heard. Goro knows just by looking at himself there's discomfort in his own younger self's eyes. He knows why as well. She laughed like that when she was drunk and doing what she said was his best bet in situations like that. Play cute for her video and he wouldn't have to endure too much hardship.

“Oh my god, something else? Not even an-” and the video ends abruptly sliding into a black screen with an apology for losing the rest of the footage in big white text.

Goro sits for a while just looking at the suggested next videos after the clip had ended, not really wanting to move or do much else.

“...hm…” He knows the rest of the videos are just his mother playing with the camera, filming scenery around the city. He wipes his eyes, envious of every other person in the world with a loving mother right now. He can't find a single good memory of her, even in this one, he knows how scared he was of messing up. She wanted a video of an idyllic little family video of her son's birthday. This one was close to the end, it wasn't enough to make her want to keep living.

* * *

He had wanted to thank him in person, a bit nervous but happy to make the connection to someone so extraordinary.

He rambles without noticing, he was so used to being listened to, the curly-haired boy gladly waits and when needed to give his thoughts he gladly answers. “The phantom thieves would never back down to a powerful opponent. They would fight to the end.”

What a dumb thing to say, he finds himself thinking.

“What's your name?”

The boy answers. Akira. It was his first reason to hate him, his mind straying to her abandoned account that only he knew the password to.

“We should exchange contact information.”

  
  



End file.
